Stranger Things, Season 4, Episode 7: The Massacre At Hawkins Lab
Technically the mid-season finale for season four (a... nine episode season?), "The Massacre at Hawkins Lab" is an-hour-and-a-little-bit-more long mini-movie that kind of has the action climaxes of... well, at least three of our four plotlines. Sorry, Team California, I really don't have a whole ton to say about your side of the story. I'm just going to handwave them off entirely. Maybe Mike, Will, Jonathan and Argyle will get to do something cool in the next couple of episodes when they finally arrive at Project: Nina, but... yeah, I do have to admit that their whole storyline could've been easily removed with minimal impact to the season.
Anyway, episode 7 basically splits the rest of our cast up into three different action climaxes, all of which culminate in an actually well-foreshadowed and amazing usage of 'it's all there all along, we just never connected the dots' style of reveal, and I think I should recognize that amazingly-done plot twist. I have been more critical about this season than I normally am with TV shows, but I absolutely love how all the investigations and world-building have finally built up to an amazing point that ties everything together with the true identity of Vecna.
So basically the being we've been calling "Vecna" is Henry Creel, otherwise known as 001. And we get to see how this character has literally been in our faces all season long, making a lot of the sleuthing and clue-hunting feel genuinely impactful when we actually learn how they all tie together. Nancy and Robin's investigation was the first to show us a flashback of the Creel household from the viewpoint of his dad... and instead of a 'demon' haunting the Creel residence, it's actually little Henry himself. Which even Victor, in his retelling, had already noted how Henry was always a more withdrawn boy. It's just a small detail in Victor's retelling, but as we hear Henry's huge motive speech, and his talk about how everyone else is constrained by time in front of that recurring grandfather's clock, as he felt more attuned to the also-recurring theme of black widow spiders, we jump into Eleven's side of things...
...where we also find out that after the death of Victor Creel, that was when we get the revelation that Henry Creel was the first superhuman telekinetic/psychic that dr. Brenner captured. We have hints that "One" isn't around anymore, and while it's not too far of a stretch to guess that the recurring orderly that constantly interacts with Eleven and tries to help her escape is actually One... my impression is that he was going to get himself killed by, oh, Brenner or a rogue Demogorgon or something, leading to Eleven's massacre. No, turns out that Brenner had suppressed Henry/One's powers with a chip. Henry sweet-talks Eleven into helping him remove the inhibitor chip... and we get the full clarity that it was Henry that walks around and murders almost everyone in Hawkins Lab.
So yeah, Eleven did cause the massacre in Hawkins Lab. Not directly by being driven to telekinetically murder her siblings and her tormentor, but by unleashing One upon them.
Or, rather, buying into Henry's story about how Brenner's disciplinary actions to Two and the other bullies is just some 5D chess game to cause them to get angry and kill Eleven. Brenner might be evil, but One painted him as an even bigger psychopath than he actually is, which is interesting -- and I bet that us, the audience, watching the orderly talk to Eleven, would totally believe that sort of manipulation is totally in Brenner's wheelhouse.
The two of them eventually come into a huge telekinetic battle at the end of the episode (where it's intercut with two other battles, very neat) and we learn that it's actually Eleven that uses the full force of her powers to banish Henry Creel to the Upside-Down, transforming him into the desiccated undead lich-being that has been going around killing kids throughout the season. (Oh, and creates the portal beneath Hawkins, too) The actual 'Vecna' hasn't been particularly interesting if we're being honest, but Jamie Campbell Bower's acting as a younger Henry Creel in the mad scientist facility is definitely amazingly well done. All the ranting about how they are the superior species about to break free from humanity's shackles, his genuine disappointment when Eleven doesn't follow him like a good little sister, and the instant snap back to cold psychopathy as he goes straight into attacking Eleven...
Good stuff, good stuff. Again, the fact that the orderly and the Creel family flashback and the Hawkins massacre have all been sprinkled throughout the season is just the cherry on top.
That's the first main plot, anyway -- Eleven discovering who her real opponent is. The episode does bring up the Mind Flayer a couple of times from the previous two seasons and they speculate how he's connected to 'Vecna'. While we don't really see the big Illithid guy in the Upside-Down, I wouldn't be surprised if the next couple of episodes tell us that the Mind Flayer's just an extension of Henry or something along those lines. Dustin's working theory is that all of Vecna's murders creates smaller portals all over Hawkins, which would allow the Mind Flayer to return.
(Also tangentially related to those plot are Owens and Brenner discussing, and the torture of that second soldier... but these are basically just exposition to move the plot forwards. Neat, but nothing much for me to really talk about.)
Anyway, last episode, Steve gets dragged to the Upside-Down by the water-gate, and Nancy, Robin and Eddie follow him into this alternate-universe realm. And both Team Steve and Team Joyce in Alaska are all basically living in a huge action movie. Steve did get bitten by a Demo-bat and we've seen how nasty bites from these Upside-Down monsters can affect people in ways that are more than just the rabies that Robin is afraid about. Again, I don't really care about the Steve/Nancy shipping that this season (and Eddie) has kind of been shoving down our throats, but, shit, if Jonathan wants to spend all his screentime high on weed... I'm all for it.
The older kids go off to Nancy's house to get into her stash of guns -- something Eddie is incredulous about... but after you get stalked by a meat-Mind-Flayer flesh golem one time, I wouldn't blame the lady for having a small armory in her house. Unfortunately, they discover that while the Upside-Down is a mirrored version of the real world, it's a mirrored version of the past version of the real world. Which, again, seems to be something that might be tied to the time that Henry Creel fell into the Upside-Down -- the implication is that the Upside-Down is a duplicate of the world as it was when Henry entered it.
Anyway, the older kids try their best to contact Dustin, Lucas and Max in the real world. Oh, Erica has basically also blackmailed her way into joining the party. Her joke of being sassy and not taking shit from anyone is kind of one-note (she does have a couple of smaller appearances earlier this season that I didn't mention) but I'm happy to see her join the gang. There's a neat way of them communicating with the older kids trapped in the Upside-Down with lights and an etch-a-sketch... pretty great stuff as they try to figure out how to communicate with each other. A lot of fun stuff -- Team Dustin gets held up a little as the police and eventually their parents end up trying to investigate, but a combination of some childish sneaking-away and Max being super mean to one of the cops ends up with them riding all the way to the location of the first murder, when Vecna crushes Chrissy against the ceiling of Eddie's trailer.
Also, we do have this neat little homage to the first season's bicycle scenes. Very nice shots as Team Nancy and Team Dustin are all simultaneously biking hard towards the plot point portal. Oh, and a whole ton of action scenes -- way more action scenes than I expected from the teens!
With some fun trippy moments of victualing the Upside-Down as a literal realm where everything is upside down, the older teens manage to use a perpetually-suspended series of blankets to get most of them through the portal. And while the death flag seems to be on Steve, it's Nancy that gets trapped by the Upside-Down, though not because of some monstrous hellbeast. Not quite. She falls down to the location of Vecna's lair, coming face-to-face with the mummified corpse of Barb as Vecna starts to talk and taunt her -- and that's the cliffhanger on the kids' side!
The Alaskan storyline, meanwhile, is all just mostly action scenes. Joyce and Murray do some impersonation shenanigans to dress up Murray as Yuri, and Murray manages to infiltrate all the way into the depths of the prison by utilizing the fact that the real Yuri's kind of a wackjob. They get front-line seats to seeing Hopper and Enzo fight against the Demogorgon, and... and it's definitely nice to see the series' original monster -- even if it's not the same Demogorgon -- basically tear his way through these poor, poor prisoners and their weapons. Pretty cool stuff -- it's mostly all action scenes, and eventually Murray and Joyce manage to strongarm and hack their way to get Hopper and Enzo out of the courtyard. We get the meeting between Hopper and Joyce. That's a neat payoff, I suppose!
But all the action scenes, despite them concluding in a way, all end in a huge cliffhanger. Nancy now stands within the lair of Vecna, in the Upside-Down version of the pool where Barb died. Joyce, Hopper and Murray have survived and reunited, but the Demogorgon's still loose and they're still in a hostile Russian base. And Eleven? How's she going to return to Hawkins and unleash some Professor X telepathic justice on Vecna? Whatever the case, the slow burn, the reframing and all the revelations of the backstory we had on Vecna-Henry-One are amazingly done. For all the grief I did give this season (and I do really think it's not the series' best work) it's been a pretty exciting mid-season movie.
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